Army Corps to sweep Atwood Park for shells

The Army Corps of Engineers will again scour parts of Seth Atwood Park for unexploded mortar shells, an effort to ease fear sometimes caused when park visitors stumble on the historic artifacts.

Sadie Gurman

The Army Corps of Engineers will scour parts of Seth Atwood Park for unexploded mortar shells.

The shells explode with about the force of a firecracker when detonated, according to a corps spokesman. And spotting one is rare, park employees say.

More common are the lead bullets hikers often find on the park’s north side, which, corps officials say, might have contaminated the soil. A corps contractor will take soil samples in conjunction with the ordnance sweep, though the extent of any soil contamination won’t be known until next summer.

The sweep will also help officials educate the public about the ordnance presence in the park and to ease concerns that arise when park visitors stumble upon them.

Crews will sweep for shells and take soil samples for six weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Army Corps project manager Walter Perro said.

“I’d be surprised if we find” a mortar shell, Perro said. “We’ll find more lead out there than we will anything else.”

The lead bullets and the shells were left behind by the Army troops who used the land as a training ground, the former Camp Grant in World War I and World War II. Park visitors and employees have occasionally found remains of artillery and mortar shells — sand-filled practice rounds — since Camp Grant closed in the late 1940s and the range became a public park.

Finding ordnance has always been rare at the park, officials say, but it can cause alarm. Last year, a man brought a mortar shell he found to the Public Safety Building in Rockford to hand it over to authorities, prompting an evacuation of the building.

The sweep, officials say, should also remind parkgoers not to touch the explosives, but to call authorities upon spotting them.

Most of the problem ordnance was removed and destroyed during sweeps in the late 1990s. A sweep of the north side in spring 2004 yielded just five mortar shells and two artillery rounds.

“The park has been open to the public for 51 years, and we’ve never had an incident as a result of these mortars,” said Patricia Parks, the Rockford Park District’s environmental recreation manager. “There’s not a lot to fear.”

Soldiers training at Camp Grant fired practice rounds from the south side of the Kishwaukee River toward target areas on the north. The corps is likely to find fewer shells on the park’s south side than it did on the north, Perro said. Still, the man who toted a shell to the PSB found it while fishing on the river’s south side. And there have been several reported sightings since, park employees said.

“When we find them on the south side, it has to be because someone disposed of them there,” Perro said. “You just never know if a soldier buried one by the firing line or not.”

The mortar shells are about 3 inches in diameter and a foot long. Park employees say the shells are sometimes mistaken for scrap metal. They contained low-level gunpowder and were designed to make a divot in the ground upon impact.

“There were no high explosives ever used in Camp Grant,” said Perro, who urged park visitors to use common sense and report the shells if they find them.

The lead bullets don’t pose a health risk to visitors who find them in the park, Perro said. But countless bullets from small arms were fired between 1917 and 1950, he said, raising concerns that lead has seeped into the soil and could leach into the Kishwaukee River.

Still, the chances of lead being at the ground’s surface are “remote,” Perro said, and would not likely pose a threat to hikers, park visitors or fisherman if it leached into the river.

The public won’t know if there’s lead contamination in the soil until next summer. Soil samples to be collected next month will be shipped to labs for study.

Staff writer Sadie Gurman can be reached at 815-987-1389 or at sgurman@rrstar.com.

Camp Grant history

Three years into World War I, the federal government established training grounds on 2,200 acres south of Rockford along the Rock and Kishwaukee rivers. In just five months, 1,500 buildings went up, requiring 48 million feet of lumber, 300 miles of wiring, 1,000 tons of nails and 150 acres of roofing.

On July 18, 1917, Camp Grant opened to train the Army’s 86th Division.
Barracks housed 50,000 infantrymen, and the camp hospital had space for 1,500 patients. The commissary served 30,000 eggs, 800 pounds of chicken and 225 quarters of beef daily. A fleet of 500 taxis whisked people between town and camp.

For 16 months after September 1917, Camp Grant was a temporary home for an average of 20,000 men. As many as 12,170 troops from Illinois and Wisconsin trained at Camp Grant, where they learned skills to keep them alive on the European battlefields.

Between 1900 and 1920, Rockford’s population grew from 31,051 to 65,651 in part because of immigration, a strong economy and Camp Grant.

In April 1924, Camp Grant deactivated, and the Illinois National Guard used the site as a training ground until December 1940.

During World War II (1939-45), Camp Grant reactivated as one of the largest troop induction centers and training camps in the nation. The rifle range was used during both wars and by the National Guard for target practice. This included use of .30- and .45-caliber small arms, Stokes trench mortars, 37 mm and 3-inch anti-aircraft artillery, rifle grenades and hand grenades.

In 1946, the government terminated Camp Grant, and the once massive military reservation was parceled into what is now Chicago/Rockford International Airport, industrial complexes, subdivisions and farm areas.

The rifle range is now Atwood Park. The public park is named after Seth B. Atwood, who purchased 340 acres in 1955 and donated 312 acres to the Rockford Park District a year later. The district acquired an additional 20 acres from the airport in 1957.Atwood Park, located south of New Milford School Road, includes a lodge, campground and outdoor-education center, picnic areas, shelters and a boat ramp.

Sporadic reports of mortar shells found by visitors and Park District employees prompted park officials to close the 332-acre park from August to November in 1995 to allow the Army Corps of Engineers time to scour the park for buried mortar shells.

The federal government paid for the $660,000 sweep, which turned up 137 shells, 12 of which were live.

In 1999, Camp Lone Oak, the popular weeklong overnight camps held each year at Atwood, was canceled so engineers could conduct another sweep.

In 2004, a sweep of the north side of the park yielded five mortars and two artillery rounds.

Sources: Rockford Register Star archives and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers